Ask Paul: April 16 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Here’s another great set of reader questions so we can kick off the weekend a bit early and hopefully get outside.

Another WOA silicon partner?

MartinusV2 asks:

After watching the nVidia keynote monday, I was very impressed with their new ARM server chip Grace. I then wondered if nVidia could, if they want, create the perfect ARM CPU for Windows 10 on Arm since Qualcomm seems not so eager to put the resources to create a real ARM CPU for desktop that would compete against Apple M1. I think, nVidia could be a real Apple M1 competitor.

Obviously, the performance of WOA systems so far has been lackluster, though I’m not sure if that’s entirely the fault of the Qualcomm-based chipsets we’ve seen so far. Whatever the reason, Microsoft and Qualcomm are clearly working to advance the platform and improve performance. If they can pull that off just as x64 compatibility lands, WOA could finally become competitive.

That said, Microsoft claimed during the Windows 10 on ARM (WOA) announcement that its intention was to eventually working with multiple silicon partners. And this market could definitely use the competition. I would love to see this happen.

Text size matters

wright_is asks:

The standard text size in Windows 10 is too large. Is there any way to reduce the scaling below 100% or to select a different base font size? I’ve done some searching and everything I’ve found either doesn’t exist in Windows 10 any more or relates to Windows 7 or older.

That’s an interesting issue. I have severe myopia and so I find myself bumping up the display scaling on all PCs and the text scaling every once in a while. But I’ve never thought the text size was too big. Regardless, I’m a bit surprised that’s not an option in Display settings, but I’m not aware of a way to make that change and researching it didn’t turn up anything, sorry. Surely there’s a Registry setting that controls this?

Reading

wmurd118 asks:

I assume you use whatever phone you’re using for the day to listen to your audiobooks.

Correct.

However, when reading ( and I also consider listening to audiobooks as reading) do you use some type of ereader such as a paperwhite, etc or do you merely read with your IPad along with your other consumables?

I do use an iPad for reading, not a dedicated eReader.

There are multiple reasons for this. I’m an Amazon customer, so I buy books and periodicals from Kindle and audiobooks from Audible, and not all Kindle content displays on their eReaders, which is crazy to me.  You have to use an app on phone or tablet instead. Kindles are still black and white, and I do read several graphic novels and travel guides each year, which are in color. I also read content in apps like Medium, Pocket, Google (Discovery feed), Google News, and The New York Times, and that all requires an iPad. And since I am going to using the iPad anyway, a Kindle is just redundant, another thing to charge, sync, and remember to carry around. I know it has a few advantages—battery life, especially—but they’re not enough for me.

This is one of those “best tools for the job” things. I don’t listen to Audible from my iPad, so I don’t install that app there. I do install the Medium, Pocket, and The New York Times apps on my phones (and Google and Google News are preinstalled) because you never know, I may find myself out in the world with time to read, but that’s not my typical device for that. Etc.

Secondly, do you listen to your audiobooks at 1:1 speed or faster?

Almost always at the normal speed. I’d have said 100 percent, but last year for the first time I ran into a speaker so annoyingly slow moving that I actually sped it up.

Why aluminum?

jwpear asks:

Putting aside the lack of recent innovation in the Surface line, has anyone at Microsoft ever explained why they don’t offer the Surface Laptop in the beautiful natural magnesium finish like they do with Surface Book and Surface Pro? I’m particularly fond of this finish because it feels so good and it does not show finger prints and smudges. I can’t for the life of me, outside of me just being the weird one in liking this, figure out why they don’t. I vaguely remember hearing/reading that SL is made of aluminum rather than magnesium, so maybe that’s why.

One of the problems with Surface Laptop is that it’s such a familiar form factor, and Microsoft put off releasing this product for years because it needed to differentiate it from the MacBook Air. So Microsoft decided to offer Surface Laptop with Alcantara and, crucially, in different colors. And if you remember your Surface history, you know that the first Surface PCs were black-painted magnesium, and that that paint scratched and peeled off too easily. So the reason that Surface Laptop is aluminum is that aluminum can be anodized (painted) more reliably, making different color options both possible and viable. Personalization is big for a product aimed at the mass market.

Restart apps on reboot

Crunchyfrog asks:

Something curious that I found in Windows 10 that I feel must be new or a newer feature is the ability for Windows to save restartable apps. Essentially, if the app is compatible it can automatically be restarted upon reboot or login, much like what Apple has done for years with MacOS and is a feature I rely on with my Mac. I don’t recall seeing this before and honestly it does not work terribly well at restarting non Microsoft apps but do you know when this was introduced into Windows and have you used it? It is located under the Accounts section of Settings under Sign-in Options.

I don’t, but I’m sure this is something that will be enabled by default at some point. It seems like a good companion to whatever interface for controlling which apps run at startup.

Regardless, this feature is getting more prominent in the future. I didn’t include the relevant screenshot when I wrote about the Windows Insider build that included the unclear note about Timeline, but the original Microsoft blog post notes that this build also adds a new option in Start’s Power menu, alongside Sleep, Shut down, and Restart, that lets you toggle “Restart apps after signing in.” So they’re clearly promoting this feature to be more visible and discoverable, which is great.

Escalation

j5 asks:

Where do you see all this user tracking, like Google’s FLoC, going in the future? We know companies like Google and Facebook are aggressive and open about their tracking. I tend to trust Microsoft and Apple more, but I’m not naive either.

Some will see this as a fundamental fight for the future of the Internet, while others may just view it as the most recent escalation in a long-evolving battle between privacy advocates and corporations. I’m actually leaning more towards the former view, frankly, and I think it’s incredibly important that we, collectively, prevent any company from tracking individuals online while allowing them to market the benefits of individuals allowing that and then being paid for that right on an ongoing basis. I think it’s inevitable.

One thing that popped in my mind was our countries jump to the Patriot Act because of 9/11, not getting political here, but it made me wonder if we’ll see such an extreme reaction from the government and us, to these companies when it comes to user privacy. Will it take some major privacy leak that exposes government bodies before we see real change in how these companies handle our user information?

So, regarding politics, it’s impossible not to involve politics, since it will be governments that establish and enforce the laws that this change will require. And this is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the most important and influential countries and regional governments have woken up to the threat of Big Tech and seem inclined to fix the problem. But on the other, governments move slowly if at all oftentimes.

I feel like everyone is aware of the tracking and these companies. But it can be an up hill walk trying to manage avoiding it too so most people just don’t do anything about it. I know I’m all over the place with this one. But just curious what your thoughts are on where all this user data tracking is heading. Thanks.

I think we all are. It’s bad, but our understanding of it is still evolving. And it’s like a lot of things, where some people are alarmed, some are just waking up, many are blissfully clueless, and a small but alarming set of people are happy about the current situation and want Google to track them as a thank you for all the great services it provides. We’re all over the map, collectively. But all it really takes is the right combination of outrage, awareness, and government action to make it stop. And I do think we get there.